


she once was a true love of mine

by philthestone



Series: then she'll be a true love of mine [10]
Category: Outlander (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, as he Deserves, for everyone who read this this morning i edited the ending a little bit, i finish this story where i started it. with jamie hugging his babies, my parents cant be spies theyre not cool enough ft. time travel, new and improved!!!, thats what impulse posting at eleven am will force u to do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:09:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27685405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: "Many many years ago, in the aulden times, there lived a young woman who was of the faeries. She was a bonny thing -- the most bonny lass ye may have e’er laid eyes on, wi’ hair like black earth and eyes like the gems of auld an’ a laugh that made the forests sing."Bree, beside him, continues scowling at her shoes as though her last-week declaration that she would like to attend university in Boston -- "this isyourdoing," Claire had informed him, with wryness in her voice -- has been summarily swapped out for a new career of floorboard-staring.Jamie supposes there is no easy way to learn that your mother is from the future.
Relationships: Claire Beauchamp & Brianna Fraser, Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser, Jamie Fraser & Brianna Fraser
Series: then she'll be a true love of mine [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1762789
Comments: 32
Kudos: 111





	she once was a true love of mine

**Author's Note:**

> the final installment is here! this one in particular was a bit tricky to write, because i always struggle with jamie pov. but here it is!
> 
> this is not to say that ill never write any more stories for these scarborough fair lovelies. they are still dear to my heart, and have many shenanigans to be explored that i havent yet. i'll put a few more notes at the end, but for now -- i hope you enjoy this epilogue. it originally popped into my health right after i wrote the first 2 stories. i havent been able to actually write it until now -- perhaps because i felt like i didnt have the right infrastructure for it -- and, in a sense, i feel like the emotion that i felt when i first conceived it was a little lost in translation. but maybe thats just me having a hard time saying goodbye to this little passion project.
> 
> either way -- thank you to everyone who has followed this story even peripherally <3 it brings me so much joy to know that my writing is touching people's hearts in any way shape or form.
> 
> as always, the title is from scarborough fair, and reviews of any kind are the light of my life

In the corner of a small cottage built with love and cedar shelves the growing shadows of twilight are collecting.

It’s a summer twilight, hot and chirrupy. A man, having stepped into the room a moment earlier, is leaning down to coax an oil lamp to life. Indoors always adopt a false sort of dark this time of year, even when the window lies open and blue-blush across from them; he lets the flame catch and then flicker with the soft _shh_ lamps tend to make, then rights himself, watching it sputter to life and fill the place with a soft orange glow.

He sets it down on the cluttered workbench. Then he quietly arranges his long limbs into a sitting position on the floor, and turns to his right, where his girl has been sitting for the last hour. 

Her cheeks are splotchy from crying; he has to swallow back the immediate and near primordial instinct to pull her into his arms.

“I didn’t think ye’d find me here,” she mumbles, into those colt-like knees of hers.

“Did ye no’?” 

He says this very gently.

“I dunno.”

“Yer Mam’s in her garden. But ye knew that, or ye wouldnaeve come here.”

“I do _not_ want to talk to Mama right now.” 

“I ken ye don’t.”

“I don’t really want to talk to _you_ either.”

“ _Brianna_ ,” he says, with a sharper edge of warning in his voice. 

He is still her father after all.

Bree’s face flushes, ears pinkening under her ruddy hair. She has enough of her mother in her that he can sometimes imagine her a sparkle-eyed kelpie found in a deep woodland loch. Hair like a flame that lives in water, Claire says, and a worn cloak of her sibling’s filched breeks. 

But a young one, he thinks. Pokey at the elbows, and as yet without the worldly time to hide away life’s darker mysteries within her breast. 

Jamie sighs, and stretches his legs out in front of him, and taps the dusty wooden floor with one finger.

“Many many years ago,” he starts quietly, “in the aulden times --” 

“There was a young woman who was of the faeries.” 

She finishes it in a whisper, with perfect cadence and unhurried immediacy. 

But her glare continues. One rosy cheek is pressed against her knobbly knees, turning her face away from him. Dressed in Fergus’s outgrown clothes, stubbornly against skirts that might get in the way of her farm chores or climbing to the top of Mrs. Flannigan’s tallest poplar tree simply to see if she _can_ , she still bears the smudge of grease on her cheek from this morning when she showed Young Ian how to fix the pulley for the Ridge’s well. The sleeves of the off-blue shirt are rolled up, just once, but soon she’ll be tall enough that they’ll actually fit her.

Lord, that they have been given something so precious and fundamentally _theirs_. 

“D’ye feel we’ve been dishonest with ye?”

“A bit,” Bree mutters, more or less muffled. He catches it, because he has spent the past fifteen years catching all these little details of hers.

“Hmph,” he says. “Ye shouldnae.”

“Thanks, Da, I feel _sae_ much better.”

 _Lord_ , Jamie thinks again. But with somewhat less tender flavouring this time. He runs one rough hand over his face; the soft light of the oil lamp flickers.

“Bree.”

“You’re treatin’ me like a bairn.”

“Are we now.”

“You _are_. I’m _not_.”

“I willnae lie, _a leannan_ , yer actions dinna say as much.”

She flashes him an unimpressed glare. Willie’s not far behind her in those these days, but Bree’s -- Claire always insists -- are something uniquely Fraserish to behold. It means he is more than capable of holding his ground.

“Aye, because that’s clearly what ye _think_ I am,” she says, scowls, and ducks her head, picking at a half-healed scab on her thumb. “ _Mama_ does, anyway.”

“Oh? An’ how have ye come upon such a conclusion, if I may ask yer ladyship?”

“Because you’ve told me a -- a _fairy_ story my whole life --”

“Brianna --”

“You could have been honest with me! So I’d actually _know_ who my mother was!”

The words slip like cold water into his wame. _If ye’ve never been honest with me before, be so now, Claire_.

He remembers the green of that glade like it was yesterday.

“Ye canna truly believe ye dinna ken the truth of who yer mother is,” he says, finally and evenly. 

Bree’s face flushes, and she avoids his eye. 

It’s funny, how her vowels turn crisp and over-enunciated and Claire-like when she’s upset. Funny in that way the smaller things in life can be, that way you wave greetings like your childhood nextdoor neighbour did or add up sums according to an old trick of your uncle’s. Funny in that way all details parents notice in their children are -- the shape of hands and the angle of grins and the way a stone fruit might be eaten, with the stone sucked clean before half the flesh is gone because that’s how _they_ do it. 

Perhaps it is their own fault, Jamie thinks. So overwhelmed by her miraculous entrance into their life that they kept her close to them even in the face of huge unknowns. Fergus was older than he should have been before they had any say in the matter, and William cheerfully too-young to ever feel entrusted with his parents’ struggles. 

But Bree -- darling from the moment she was born, strong-headed and compassionate and solemnly understanding even in the dead cold of winter, with no playmates but a teenaged brother and the wooden doll Murtagh made her -- has never _known_ what a family secret might look like. 

_Tha’s Mr. Horse,_ she’d told him once, pointing out the many intricacies of her latest sketch with chubby six-year-old hands. _An’ there’s his bairns, Da. Oh, an’ his wife horse. An’ they do everythin’ t’gether ‘cause they’re a_ fam’ly _, see?_

“Brianna,” he tries again, gentler this time. She doesn’t say anything, only scuffing her foot against the surgery floor with somewhat stubborn flourish. “We didnae tell ye ‘til now t’keep ye from danger. Surely ye understand that. ‘Tis -- ‘tis no’ an _easy_ piece of knowledge to carry.”

“I’m not a _bairn_ ,” she snaps again, spots of flushed colour high on her cheeks. 

“Aye, ye’re not,” Jamie agrees. 

She looks up at him, startled, as thought she never expected he would. It’s enough to make the bitten-back smile show itself, and she notices immediately, schooling her features back into some semblance of a lofty scowl. Then she sniffs, loudly, and squares her shoulders. 

Jamie heaves a second sigh. 

He supposes there is no easy way to learn that your mother is from the future.

“Ye know,” he starts, then pauses for a long moment. He reaches over and tugs her clenched fingers away from where they grip the folded hem of her blouse. Bree remains tight as a coiled spring. But she allows him to lay her hand gently against the floor, pushing her curled fingers open, and placing his own inconspicuously next to it. “Have ye gotten all yer chores done then?”

She frowns, but predictably lifts her chin to answer. “ _Yes_ , Da.”

“Ye watered Bran like I asked ye to.”

“Aye.”

“And ye helped Willie wi’ his sums?”

“He’s still bad with th’hundreds,” Bree informs him, tilting her head to make the sentiment more clearly known. “I think he gets’em mixed up with tens. An’ then he wants t’go outside an’ watch Anabelle graze.”

Jamie makes a noise at the back of his throat. 

“Anabelle doesnae _graze_. She roots through everythin’ she isnae meant to an’ causes trouble, which yer Mam is always verra quick to remind me.”

He watches her sharp inhale -- the way the blue irises of her eyes skittering over and across the workbench and the lamp to glare deliberately at the opposite corner of the room. She is still upset. He can tell. Of course he can tell -- easy as breathing, he can feel the shift in the coil of her hurt as much as if it were a part of himself. Why is that, he’s always wondered? How can it be, that another soul is so fundamentally entwined in your own, but so easily misunderstood at the same time? 

The crease between her brows remains. It beats at something inside of him as harshly as it did when she was all but five and could fit, tucked, into the easy warmth of his coat.

“So,” he says.

_Many many years ago, in the aulden times, there was a young woman who was of the faeries, an’ she fell one day from sky to meadow, and came upon a bonny lad._

“ _So_ ,” she parrots back, frowning. But her expression softens, and she stares at her hand, resting beside his. “I jus’ wanted some time wi’ my thoughts, I guess.”

“Aye.”

“Fergus an’ Willie didna get upset.” 

It breaks off, confused and unfinished. 

He is sure -- remembers, even -- what it was like to be fifteen. A friend of Jenny’s would call him gangly, or Dougal slide a comment disparaging Brian Fraser into pleasant conversation, or he’d slip and break his toe trying to impress a lass two years older than him, and the next few days were spent burning with a pent up tangle of emotion that had decided it would best be known to the world through a particularly humiliating type of waterwork. But for all that the world knows Bree to be a mirror of himself, Jamie feels his breath catch: 

There is so much of Claire in the unfamiliar vulnerability on her face.

“ _An urrainn dhut innse dhomh dè a tha a ’cur dragh ort_ , Brianna?” he says, quietly.

She doesn’t reply for a long moment. 

“How could ye not have _told_ us?” she says finally, in a small voice that is no less belligerent for it. Jamie frowns.

“Bree …”

“You’ve -- you’ve always -- _told_ me things, Da, you’ve said -- there’re things we must _know_ , to face the world, an’ -- an’ that we’d do it together, as a _family_.” Her frown grows as she talks, the strength of her voice returning. “You _said_.”

“Aye,” he says, carefully.

“ _You’ve_ always been honest with me! You’ve -- ye told me, Bree, I speak t’ye as my own heart, so ye may ken the ways of the world. That’s what ye said! You tell me _everythin’_ , an’ ye didn’t tell me any of this!”

She speaks to her own hands, held animated and empathic in front of her. She is so _bright_ , his girl -- whip-smart and nimble and brilliant in her laughter, shining just like her mother does. She’s always faced the world with wide-open arms. Sometimes, he can trick himself into thinking she is somehow proof of his own fairytale’s truth. He runs a finger over the gritty floor beneath them and then looks up at the bundles of herbs Claire has strung on the mantlepiece to dry.

Jamie swallows. 

“Bree,” he says, in a slightly hoarser voice. “I dinna tell ye everythin’.” 

The crack in his chest aligns perfectly with the one splitting across her beautiful face. Her feelings, wobbly and thick with innocent, childlike betrayal, leak out like her earlier teats did. He hates himself, just a little bit. But he continues, more firmly.

“Of course I don’t. Yer -- _a leannan_. Ye must understand. Parents -- ‘tis their job tae protect their bairns, ye ken? There are things in this life, I -- I’d gladly perish a thousand times tae keep ye from seein’. From _feelin’_.” 

“So ye’d _lie_ to us? Our whole lives?”

And when _do_ the secrets become lies? 

They have a family story, and it weaves the truth into it like threads of silk embroidery in a warm coat. He’d always known they would tell the children one day. He'd only waited for his wife to make the decision. Sometimes, he thinks she might have simply forgotten it. Claire is like that -- she’ll become absorbed in her care for others with that practical grace of hers and forget that there are larger pieces moving in the world.

“No,” Jamie says. “We’ve never lied tae ye, Brianna.” Startled, she finally looks up at him. Jamie feels his expression soften. “I’m yer _Da_ , _mo chridhe_. There’s no pain on God’s Earth I’d ever want ye tae feel. It’s just that -- anyone who’s lived fer a few decades, has pain in their heart that -- that sometimes they must hide.” 

“I could _take_ it,” Bree starts, sounding so much like a five-year-old version of her tucked away somewhere deep in his memory that Jamie huffs out a mirthless chuckle.

Again, he has to swallow back the impulse to take her up in his arms, as if by chance he might keep the world from finding her in his embrace. _Of course_ , there are things he has never told her.

Things he is not sure he will ever have the courage to.

“Aye. But I dinna want ye to. And neither does yer Mam.” 

They watch each other a moment as he waits for her to untangle. 

Slowly, one of Bree's slender hand reaches over the floorboard and sneaks itself underneath his. With slightly fumbling movements, she pushes his palm, even now so much rougher and larger than hers, to face upward against the ground. The lamp casts a quiet, dreamlike glow over them both. They don’t say anything for a while and listen to the cicadas outside the window as Bree inspects the scarring across his palm in the solemn game she’d play so regularly as a child.

Finally, she says, in a voice just barely above a whisper:

“Is Mama really mad at me for running away?”

His first impulse is to laugh -- she has done nothing but take questionable refuge in her mother’s own workshop, hidden under the drying few bundles of sage that Bree herself had helped Claire and Marsali pick yesterday. His second impulse, liquid in his chest like what he’s learned love can sometimes feel like, is to reach out with his free hand and tuck a loose strand of Bree’s hair behind her ear.

“Brianna.”

“I just -- I didna mean t’be rude,” she says, warbling. Her eyes are wide. “I only thought that -- that maybe I’d done somethin’ wrong, for Mama no’ t’have told me ever, and it really _hurt_ , Da.” 

There it is -- the soft note that he’s suspected was being held in her stubborn little heart this whole time. Jamie exhales, shoulders sagging with the movement. He traces the shape of her face with his eyes: his mother’s cheekbones, his own sharp nose. The red-gold hair that Claire says comes from _genes_ , gifts you give your children without meaning to.

“Did I ever tell ye that when ye were first born, yer Auntie Jenny was fast against us callin’ ye _Bree_?”

He cannot help the small smile that plays at his lips as he watches her nose scrunch up, even as one hand comes up to paw at her still-blotchy cheeks. 

“No.”

“Och, aye. Weel, ye were supposed to be a boy -- we’d all convinced ourselves as such, an’ had these grand plans tae name ye Brian fer yer grandsire. An’ o’ course, ye came intae this world as bonny an’ fierce as the wee lass ye are, an’ yer Mam decided then an’ there that ye’d be called _Brianna_ , because it didnae make nae difference to her.” He quirks an eyebrow, pursing his lips so as not to smile. “Ye ken what _Bree_ means in the _Gàidhlig_ , of course.” 

Bree rolls her eyes, then drops them to a midpoint on his chest.

“Ye’ve told me before, Da,” she says. “I don’t mind.”

“Said a -- a _bother_ wasnae somethin’ t’call a bairn. She worrit one day ye’d grow old an’ come tae resent us fer it,” he continues. “Or perhaps, ye’d decide it meant ye must live up tae it’s meanin’.” 

Bree sniffs again, with that same half-wrinkled nose.

“I told ye Lyle MacPhearson knocked himself in the chin,” she mutters, picking at a thread over her knee.

“Oh, aye,” Jamie agrees solemnly. “But yer Mam, now, she wouldnae have it. She insisted no name we called ye could stop ye kennin’ how much we loved ye, in this life or the next.” 

He pauses, finally allowing the loose hand she has been playing with to curl more firmly around hers, and brings both up to his lap. Then he says, softly: 

“Ye took sae long comin’ intae this world, _m’annschad_. I thought -- twice, I thought ye wouldnae make it. That it would have been my fault, fer letting her stay here, though she kent it may have been easier, more safe in her time.” Bree’s eyes, wide as the patch of cornflowers Claire had exclaimed over so happily last week, are framed by fair lashes almost golden in the lamplight. “I never told ye,” he says, swiping a compulsive thumb over her cheek. “In my selfishness, I thought I could bear tae lose anoth -- tae _lose_ ye, if it meant keepin’ yer mother. But yer Mam --”

He can see it, the moment the fragile dam of stubborn hurt breaks, the tightening of the corners of her eyes that happens in the exact same shape and way as his do. He feels her take a shuddering breath against his front, no longer a headstrong young woman but a child who loves her parents. 

“ _Da_ ,” she says, voice breaking.

“There are times I think she might have -- have _willed_ ye intae this world with how much she loved ye,” he says, just above a whisper. His words carry a sort of steadiness that comes with decades of care-hewed security, but he knows that there is still that familiar dampness in his eyes. The memory of that day, that room, is just as real as the glade was. “She was barely awake by the end, Brianna. I -- I cannae explain what I saw. But I ken we would not be here right now, _a leannan_ , if yer mother did not love you more than life itself.”

She sobs on the abbreviated end of a gasp, and, finally, he is allowed to wrap her fully in his arms. She curls against his front in a practiced, automatic movement, one she has been doing for what feels like always. Jamie presses his mouth to the beautiful crown of her head, quietly.

“ _Shhh shh shh._ Hush, _a ghraidh_. Bree. _Leanbh milis_. Ye must ken nothin’ that’s happened here means anythin’ fer how much we love you. Ye must know that, do ye no’? And ye cannae love someone wi’out givin’ ‘em yer whole self.”

He feels her nod against his chest; it is enough, just then. 

They sit against quietly for a while, just like that. The hard angle of the surgery’s dusty corner presses against Jamie's back, reminding him that he's not quite as young as he used to be. Bree's slender arms are wound tightly around his ribs. They form the same circlet they have been making since she did not stand any taller than his knee, and could barely fit her arms around his middle but would do so still with an abandon and ferocity that made his heart ache.

Slowly, he she quiets. The tangle of her hair is soft under his palm.

“Bree,” he says.

“Ummhmm.”

“Ye’re alright, _wee’ane_?”

Quiet for a moment. Then, “Yes Da.”

He nods, then presses another kiss to her head. “Good.”

It has been enough time that the light outside the window is much darker, and the lamplight dances like something from a faery story. They breathe together, and the quietude magnifies in that way that slowly allows heartbeats to be heard. He tightens his hold around her just slightly.

Presently, he has a thought.

“Did ye know,” Jamie says in a quiet murmur, “in yer Mam’s time, people can -- travel through the sky?”

"What?"

"Ye ken -- how we might travel by boat, an' such. Dinna think I'd like it o'er much, but there ye go. Jest, ehm, thought ye might find that interestin', no?" 

Bree looks up at him hesitantly, eyes wide, as if this new information is taking some time to register. “ _Fly?_ ”

“Och, I dinna ken exactly. Flying contraptions. Ah … _aeroplanes_ , she called ‘em.”

“People can _fly_?!”

“Weel --”

But Bree has already shot up into sitting position, tears all but forgotten.

“But that’d take an insane amount’ve power! Like _twelve_ horses!” He can almost hear the gears turning in her beautiful little head. _Lord_. “D’ye think they use gunpowder? A pulley, maybe, like the well. Is it safe? Has Mama _flown_?”

“Ye could ask her yerself, I suppose,” Jamie says, barely holding back his laughter.

“People can _fly_! Jus’ wait ‘til I tell Willie -- _oh_ \--” 

She scrambles to her feet, one knee landing awkwardly against Jamie’s ribs as she goes. “ _Oof_ \--”

“Sorry, Da! I’ll be just a moment --” 

Then she freezes, halfway, as though remembering herself. 

Brave and brilliant as the lost faerie lass, he thinks; true and feeling as her bright-faced lad.

“In the garden,” he confirms, in unspoken question and answer.

“Okay,” Bree breathes, breaking for the first time into a genuine, round-cheeked grin. She turns once more to go, then pauses, one hand clenching in bright-faced nervousness. She takes a deep breath. “Da?”

“Yes?”

“I’m really glad the faerie found her lad.”

 _A, Dhia_ , Jamie thinks, one more time.

“Me too, _a leannan_ ,” he says, with a wide-mouthed grin mirrors hers. “More than anythin’ in the world.”

Outside the window, night has properly blanketed the sky. But it is still early enough that it is not truly black. 

He takes another moment to sit quietly against the surgery wall before he rises, cramped limbs stretching, to walk back to the home life has gifted him, to make sure it’s still all in one piece.

**Author's Note:**

>  **translations**  
>  An urrainn dhut innse dhomh dè a tha a ’cur dragh ort -- roughly, "what is it that's bothering you"  
> Leanbh milis -- sweet child, darling child
> 
>  **notes**  
>  this entire thing was a new experience for me. i'd written stories before, and alternate universes to be sure, but never with a contained and properly bookended arc in mind. of course, this whole series has been nothing but missing scenes from a plot that i never managed to actually write, and so for all of you who have read and commented on these stories, i cant describe how much joy thats brought my heart. when i started, all i'd wanted to do was to write something i hadn't yet read, and flex my creative fingers, and, admittedly, feel vindicated in letting jamie actually raise his child. but it soon became an actively planned series, each installment bringing something specific and premediated to the table, rather than simply being a snapshot in an established universe. as a result, many of these stories were a lot harder for me to write than i anticipated. in addition to that, i have a ... complicated relationship with outlander canon, despite loving the main characters dearly, so feeling confident in what i wanted this story to be and not overthinking externalities was a learning curve of its own.
> 
> all of that to say, this has been a wild exercise in detaching myself from my own perfectionism. rather than agonize over all the things that are missing, or incomplete, or could be better, writing this arc has taught me to appreciate how much ive grown as a writer since my humble beginnings writing an alternate universe with somewhat similar premise way back in ye olde 2014, knee deep in star wars. i am very proud of this whole thing, even as i acknowledge that it is not anywhere close to perfect. 
> 
> i suppose, to conclude, i'd just like to say thank you. every single comment on these stories has helped contribute to that growth in unimaginable ways. i love you all, and i hope that you are safe and cared for in this complicated world we live in right now.
> 
> <3


End file.
